First time seeing Vida Blue, second time going to the Cap. Cool little scene outside the show, didn't see much of a shakedown besides some wooks selling stealie patches on the corner by the train station. Lots of extras to the shows on CashorTrade before hand, my brother and I scored two floors below face earlier this week and decided to go last minute. Also a fair amount of extras outside the venue for the show as well.

When we got inside a half hour or so before the show started, there was a decent amount of activity going on at Garcia's, the bar/small venue attached to the main venue. We decided to grab a beer from inside the main venue instead and find a decent spot on the floor. We went Page side, and were able to sit on the carpeted floors and hangout before the show.

When the light went down, they band took the stage and the crowd lit up a bit. They started with Analog Delay, which was fitting, and you started to notice the unique lighting set up that they had for the show. They took the tune out a bit, i guess you could say that it still stayed "type I" but Page was throwing out some wild sounding psychedelic synth layers with effects to create a bit of insanity, along with some cool guitar layer effects and Russell's energy-driven rhythmic drumming.

The lights were set to plan white for the first song, and incorporated a Crossing Lines album logo that was suspended behind the band and surrounded by strips of some sort of LED lights that project inward towards the logo as well as outward and towards the crowd. Once they got into Real Underground Soul Sound, the lighting took to the RGB color spectrum and was actually really impressive to see for the first time.

This song is my favorite off the new album. It is that slow funk, clearly inspired by The Meters. Page said something along the lines of "If you deconstruct that last song you can see who wrote it. It was Russell". This one got the crowd to really settle in and get a bit of a party vibe going. There were some good solos thrown in, and it was here that I started to recognize how good of a drummer Russell Batiste is with his ability to switch up the feel of a funk tune in so many ways, all while playing relatively simple patterns without over-the-top fills. Really cool tune.

I went back for another beer at this point, this time to Garcia's with a shorter line and noticed that they were streaming the show from inside of there as well. There was no noticeable delay either, which means they must be hard-wiring the feeds from cameras. That was pretty awesome that you could get a break and still not miss any of the show. They also had a much wider selection of beer inside of Garcia's. I, of course, had to opt for the Sip of Sunshine that they had on tap.

We settled back in on the other side of the venue on the floor now, and watched the rest of the show from there. Before "Where's Popeyes", Russell really got the crowd hyped up saying he wanted us all to lose our shit when that part came in the song. After a couple test "where's popeyes", they started the song and the crowd got hyped when they time came for it in the actual tune.

At one point during the show, Russell said something along the lines of "Make it sound like we haven't been a band for 15 years and this is the last night of the tour". You can tell it wasn't planned because Page was grinning ear to ear and trying to hide it. This was probably the peak energy of the crowd the whole show, we got pretty loud and sustained it for a solid 30 seconds or so. Russell really is the hype-man of the band, and people love it.

Page also eluded to the fact that they essentially will continue playing. I can't remember the exact quote, but it something along the lines of "can't wait to do it again soon" or something like that.

I was also very happy so see "Sheep", though it was almost expected having played it at the other two shows of the tour. I didn't really care, as I love Pink Floyd's Animals. They played it very well, before ending with their classic, Most Events Aren't Planned.

Setbreak came, and I stupidly pulled out my juul and took a hit of it. An usher made me go to the main lobby for a 5 minute warning he called it, which I thought was fair enough instead of kicking me out. But then the guy in the front took my license and wrote down every single detail of information from it. He wrote down my eye color and everything before handing it back and asking me to sign the sheet. I asked him what it would be used for and all he said was "we keep it on file". I was reluctant to sign it, but wanted to get back inside to catch the rest of the encore.

I was sort of ticked off that they took all my info at this point, and regretting signing the paper and giving them my license, so it was hard to enjoy encore. It was cool that they chose "Cars" with Ric Ocasek recently passing this past week. Again though, they played this at the other two shows so it was almost expected as well. Still cool to see, though.

The show got out and we walked up the street to the spot where we parked for free, and headed out. I would have rather taken the train, considering how close it is to the venue, but nothing really ran that late back to where I'm from and it would be more of a pain to park in New Haven and then have to transfer trains than it would be to just drive the whole way. Still was pretty in and out though, not terrible traffic after the show got out too.

Good show overall, this is what I thought of each member.

Adam Zimmon was a cool guitar player to see. He didn't have much of a forefront role that we are used to seeing with Trey, so it was nice to see Page take more of the leads role. This is not to say that Adam didn't have some great solos at points, it just seemed for his to have a more rhythm-player role most of the time. Sort of the least well-known and overlooked player of the group.

Russell Batiste was pretty incredible to be honest. A phenomenal funk-drummer that could play a bunch of different styles, as well as the hype-man of the group. His ability to variate funk-grooves seemed to have no limit, and his sort of less-is-more style was very cool.

Oteil Burbridge played a solid role in the grooves, I would have liked him just a bit higher in the mix though. I think that he didn't do too much to stand out really, didn't play many solo's but some of the brief bass line fills that he had were cool. Just didn't take the center of attention as much as I had expected really. Solid player, and I am sure he is capable of more, but just seemed underutilized.

Page in this environment was cool to see. He sang just about every song, and his playing was much more lead-centric than in the Phish context. He had a variety of tools that he got to play with throughout the show, including a melodica and various synths. Seeing him be more of the center of attention at times was cool. He held up just fine for the long winded set vocally, probably sang more in that one set than he would sing in a week of Phish tour. Some real cool psychedelic sounding stuff coming from his keys at times.

Would see them again.